Random reflections & rants of an architect-artist-traveller with a geeky brain and a gipsy heart

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From a November Far Far Away

You weren’t satisfied with just wounding me. You had to stab me over and over again…….. Through the misty moors and rugged lands Where I ran to, for my solace. You followed me to my sacred sands Defiling even the peace I’d earned. You mocked me, Dissatisfied That I was still unbroken. Unscarred.

Are you not happy to have robbed a part of me? My innocence, my sweet belief in love? You throw your twisted liaison at my face At the very spot that’d brought serenity to my mind? How cruel can you be? How much more monstrous, Beneath those cold blue cynical eyes? Do only women who are manipulative, spent and broken Win your labor, your effort and hand? But those who hold on to innocence, Who’re unconquered, unbroken, unspent You douse them with your poison After, first, enmeshing them in your net Your web of verbose vanity Intoxicating like sweet summer wine Your Victorian words and phantasies Set like a bait for unsuspecting hearts And then you strike, with your lethal weapon Of anger, sarcasm, wrath, Cruel dismissiveness mood-dependent To bury your victims in earth.

And when it did not work on this one You struck by taking my dreams My secret places and reveries And gave them to a murky stream. I know now what discrimination is – “Intellectual racism” is the word that best fits Because I looked exotic, not freckled and pale;So you presumed I was not worth the depth But just worth a “fuck” which, thank goodness, I denied you Only to face more rage. But at the end of the day, you know you didn’t win ‘cause I held my modesty within my grasp. And you, who have given your best to past witches, Could neither conquer my body nor soul.

Perhaps like Heathcliff you’ll always wander Like a dead man walking in the mist of your past But I’ll know in my heart, I loved Heathcliff But never surrendered to him, ‘xcept opened my heart. For as much as my fire burnt in his coldness, I’d rather save my best for genuine warmth. And the love of my Viking and my dark Angel Minstrel Took me away from your rancid swamp.

And today I stand midst the spires of this great City While your mayor makes a fool of himselfKarma for all those years of mocking That your residents would do to the rest.’cause that’s who you choose, a Fat Flatulent Fool After all that great big vaporous talk But We, we who know the strength of Value, Live in Reality and meaningful Love. We value quality And achievement Not enshrined mediocrity like your town, We value strength and genuine hard work Not a piggish, pretentious clown.

And despite your stealing my confidence And giving my gifts to shriveled thorns, I know in the end, you won’t succeed Nay, you did not succeed at all, In breaking my spirit, no matter How hard you tried as a game. My spirit, for it will still haunt you In your darkness to which you’re a knave. Thank you, for letting me realize How strong I really am, That despite your repeated stabbings, You could not kill my calm.

And as I write this, I softly realized, Those glens – they are still my own You can steal my dreams, but not the dreamer And whence they came from, there is more. Yes, once I thought ’twas you who’d take me To a magic theater and lucent lands But I know I didn’t need you to, Cause I found my way on my own.

And for he who truly loves me, With openness, and without games, To him today belongs my body, My heart, my love, my name.You can fester in your own complications And your lies behind even more backs But I chose honesty, and sanctity And I’m free of you at last.

(Notes for clarity: The person in this poem is a very narcissistic and snooty Torontonian, who used to make fun of all other cities (like most Toronto residents,) and took some sadistic pleasure in putting others down and was incredibly cruel to me, practicing what I now term as “intellectual racism” – i.e. having a completely false belief that women who look exotic are good only for sex (and I mean casual erotic sex, without even putting the effort to wine and dine), but not for intellectual discussion and friendship, while those with Anglo-Saxon heritage must naturally be all literate and intellectual (even though this too is more than often not true depending on one’s education and upbringing.)

It was the first time in my life that I realized, to my shock, that I had been judged by my looks alone, and that all my education, accomplishments and intellect had meant nothing. Because I did not give in to his demands (of cheap sex) and refused to believe that someone could be so callous and shallow since he was good with words and writing, thinking he may just be misunderstood, I was subjected to even more rage and wrath.

Today I see this person in his full light and have understood just what a genuine jerk he was and how incredibly damaged he was, and no longer have sympathies for these sort of men or the dysfunctional, issue-filled women they choose to romance who eventually leave them even more troubled.

I, of course, live in New York “this great City” with a wonderful, brilliant, kind and multi-talented man who loves and values me a lot, but at the time I had met this Toronto snoot, I resided in Montreal.

The “mayor” mentioned here is a reference to Toronto mayor Rob Ford.

The landscape is a reference to the rugged one of coastal UK, where many of my stories that I had naively narrated to him featured, and a naivete that came to bite me on my fanny as every act of kindness and civility was misinterpreted by this deeply damaged man and met with baffling unicivility. Even when I was duped into accepting an apology in person, the “apology” was given in the form of insulting rage. Well, now I am done. Free. And thanks to the idiotic antics of Toronto’s first citizen Rob Ford, I can have the last laugh – since it’s karma after all those years when Torontonians behaved as though they were the center of the Universe. You are not. You are just a big “wannabe” city with a small-town mentality hiding behind banal, boring, trying-too-hard facades. And, most importantly, Toronto is NOT New York. And never will be. Period.)

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4 thoughts on “From a November Far Far Away”

Ouch. That sounds like a painful relationship there. Well done for having the courage to share your understanding of it all. Not to mention the time it must have taken to get all those thoughts straight and into such well crafted words! And thanks too – another glimpse of clarity on what’s behind the ugly situations we all find ourselves in now and then. Good stuff :o)

I wrote that that night in just 10 minutes – a spontaneous burst which found the right words – after finding out some painful facts (by a third party) as to what a truly incredibly disturbed person this fellow really was/is and how he still hasn’t forgotten my refusal of not giving him what he wanted and holds a grudge. (His antics have hurt many others too, it seems, and it’s even crazier that this person is a “respected” medical professional – albeit in mental health. He writes very well and eloquently – which is why I had been roped in, in the first place.) But, talk is cheap. Actions and ethics and basic decency speak louder.

But it was thanks to this very weird and painful episode in my life that I discovered Dr. Palmatier and Shari Schreiber’s work – as this was, if you must have guessed it – the male borderline and narcissist rolled in one. It was his awful cutting rage, bizarre push-pull/idealization-devaluation behavior that made me read up and realize about these mental issues with manipulative men and women who have Cluster B personality disorders. He was also an expert at “pick-up artist game” tactics which is why he could seduce women initially. Seems he has a long history. I thank my gut, my dignity, my upbringing and ethics that – thank goodness, I didn’t give him what he wanted ultimately.

Although I’ve been in absolute no contact for nearly 3 years now, I very recently found out that he is such a bonafide ass that there have been documented complaints by many other women which I recently saw on a website. Wow!!! Very glad I dodged this bullet. The male borderlines are as confused and deranged as female borderlines and equally hide it well underneath shining facades.

This is at the same time jaw-droppingly horrifying, and very funny. How humour lets us face awful facts! It was like a light bulb coming on when I first read it, and it’s helped me spot the danger and get into reverse gear on a few occasions since.

But the real challenge is accepting what it is in ourselves that makes us attracted to these damaged and very damaging personalities – and then working hard to change it. Despite all the understanding I still find myself thrilled and attracted – like a moth to a flame….

Yes, very glad I discovered those ladies and their writings! Honored that Dr. Tara commented on my post “Racqueting on a grass Court” as I was a very early reader of her blog, and forwarded it to as many of my engineering buddies I could since male engineers, with their “fix it” attitude seem to be magnets for “rescue-me” crazies.

Thankfully, I’ve had very very few relations in life (a very long one with a good decent man) and two more (including my present one) and am a good judge that way, so thank goodness I’ve not even slept – let alone have a relation- with a BPD or NPD man. BUT, two men I got quite close to (platonically) who played many games and who always asked me for “kindness” (the hook) did wreak a lot of games and manipulation. Funnily enough, one was an athlete-turned-pastor (ha!), and the other a psychiatrist who I briefly dated (but didn’t sleep with.) The latter was a brilliant man and writer – but holy &^%* – the “mindfuck” he could do – and thanks to him, I googled “idealization/devaluation” and found those blogs. He was a master of projection.

I learned a lot (what more can one say?) but in a sense feel very lucky to have understood these damaging types without having a real relation with any. I did have a male secretary at a firm once who was quite an insane BPD man. My mistake has been earlier falling to the “please be kind to me; ALL women have mistreated me” hook (same, but in reverse gender of what BPD women say) till you realize, much to your horror, that is they who mistreat, and they who are unkind.